The original lineup was formed in the neighborhood of Willowdale in Toronto, Ontario, by guitarist Alex Živojinović better known by his stage name Alex Lifeson, bassist and frontman Jeff Jones, and drummer John Rutsey on September 18, 1968. Within a couple of weeks of forming and before their second performance, bassist and lead vocalist Jones left the band and was replaced, by Geddy Lee, a schoolmate of Lifeson. Their first gigs took place at the Coff-Inn, a youth center in the basement of St. Theodore of Canterbury Anglican Church in North York. After several lineup reformations, Rush's official incarnation was formed in May 1971. Consisting of Lee, Lifeson, and Rutsey. The name "Rush" was suggested, by Rutsey's brother, Bill. The band was managed by local Toronto resident Ray Danniels, a frequent attendee of Rush's early shows.
After the band's 1974 debut album, Rutsey left the band shortly after its release due to health problems, which limited his ability to tour with the band. Rush held auditions for a new drummer and selected Neil Peart as Rutsey's replacement. Peart officially joined the band on July 29, 1974, two weeks before the group's first US tour. They performed their first concert together, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann's Earth Band with an attendance of over 11,000 people at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 14. Peart also assumed the role of principal lyricist from Lee, who had very little interest in writing, despite having penned the lyrics of the band's first album. Lee and Lifeson focused primarily on the instrumental aspects of Rush, pushing the band in an increasingly progressive rock-oriented direction. Fly by Night (1975), Rush's first album after recruiting Peart, saw the inclusion of the band's first epic mini-tale "By-Tor and the Snow Dog", replete with complex arrangements and a multi-section format. Lyrical themes also underwent dramatic changes because of Peart's love for fantasy and science-fiction literature. Despite these new styles, some other songs on the album mirrored the simplistic blues style found on Rush's debut.
After "2112", Rush went to Wales to record "A Farewell to Kings" (1977) and Hemispheres (1978) at Rockfield Studios. These albums saw the band members expanding the progressive elements in their music. "As our tastes got more obscure, " Lee said in an interview "we discovered more progressive rock-based bands like Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and King Crimson, and we were very inspired by those bands. They made us want to make our music more interesting and more complex and we tried to blend that with our personalities to see what we could come up with that was indisputably us." Increased synthesizer use, lengthy songs, and highly dynamic playing featuring complex time signature changes became a staple of Rush's compositions. To achieve a broader, more progressive sound, Lifeson began to experiment with classical and twelve-string guitars, and Lee added bass-pedal synthesizers and Minimoog. Likewise, Peart's percussion became diversified in the form of triangles, glockenspiel, woodblocks, cowbells, timpani, gong, and chimes. Beyond instrument additions, the band kept in stride with the progressive rock trends by continuing to compose long, conceptual songs with science fiction and fantasy overtones. As the new decade approached, Rush gradually began to dispose of its older styles of music in favor of shorter and sometimes softer arrangements. The lyrics up to this point were heavily influenced by classical poetry, fantasy literature, science fiction, and the writings of novelist Ayn Rand, as exhibited most prominently by their 1975 song "Anthem" from Fly By Night and a specifically acknowledged derivation in 2112 (1976).
Permanent Waves (1980) shifted Rush's style of music with the introduction of reggae and new wave elements. Although a hard rock style was still evident, more synthesizers were introduced. Moreover, because of the limited airplay Rush's previous extended-length songs received. Permanent Waves included shorter, more radio-friendly songs such as "The Spirit of Radio" and "Freewill", two songs that helped Permanent Waves become Rush's first US Top 5 album. Meanwhile, Peart's lyrics shifted toward an expository tone with subject matter that dwelled less on fantastical or allegorical story-telling and more heavily on topics that explored humanistic, social, and emotional elements. Rush joined with fellow Toronto-based rock band Max Webster on July 28, 1980, to record "Battle Scar" for their 1980 release, Universal Juveniles. Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois offered the band lyrics to a song he had written. The band accepted; the song went on, after reworking by Peart, to become "Tom Sawyer".
Rush started to deviate from its 1980s style with the albums Presto and Roll the Bones. Produced by record engineer and musician Rupert Hine, these two albums saw Rush shedding much of its keyboard-saturated sound. Beginning with Presto Album (1989) , the band opted for arrangements notably more guitar-centric than the previous two studio albums. Although synthesizers were still used in many songs, the instrument was no longer featured as the centerpiece of Rush's compositions. Continuing this trend, Roll the Bones Album (1991) extended the use of the standard three-instrument approach with even less focus on synthesizers than its predecessor. While musically, these albums do not deviate significantly from a general pop-rock sound, Rush incorporated traces of other musical styles. "Roll the Bones", for example exhibits funk and hip hop elements, and the instrumental track "Where's My Thing?/ Here It Is!" features several jazz components. This return to three-piece instrumentation helped pave the way for future albums, which would adopt a more streamlined rock formula.
Rush - Where's My Thing?/ Here It Is! (drum solo) - Live in Dallas From Youtube
The band underwent another stylistic change with the recording of "Signals" in 1982. While Lee's synthesizers had been featured instruments ever since the late 1970s, keyboards were suddenly shifted from the contrapuntal background to the melodic front-lines in songs like "Countdown" and the lead-off track "Subdivisions". Both feature prominent lead synthesizer lines with minimalistic guitar chords and solos. Other previously unused instrument additions were seen in the song "Losing It", featuring collaborator Ben Mink on electric violin.
Signals also represented a drastic stylistic transformation apart from instrumental changes. The album contained Rush's only US top-40 pop hit, "New World Man", while other more experimental songs such as "Digital Man", "The Weapon", and "Chemistry" expanded the band's use of ska, reggae, and funk. Although the band members consciously decided to move in this overall direction, creative differences between the band and long-time producer Terry Brown began to emerge. The band felt dissatisfied with Brown's studio treatment of "Signals", while Brown was becoming more uncomfortable with the increased use of synthesizers in the music. Ultimately, Rush and Brown parted ways in 1983, and the experimentation with new electronic instruments and varying musical styles would come into further play on their next studio album.
The style and production of "Signals" were augmented and taken to new heights on "Grace Under Pressure" (1984). It was Peart who named the album, as he borrowed the words of Ernest Hemingway to describe what the band had to go through after deciding to leave Terry Brown. Producer Steve Lillywhite, who gained fame with successful productions of Simple Minds and U2, was enlisted to produce Grace Under Pressure. He backed out at the last moment, however, much to the ire of Lee, Lifeson, and Peart. Lee said, "Steve Lillywhite is really not a man of his word ... after agreeing to do our record, he got an offer from Simple Minds, changed his mind, blew us off ... so it put us in a horrible position." Rush eventually hired Peter Henderson to co-produce and engineer the album instead.
Musically, although Lee's use of sequencers and synthesizers remained the band's cornerstone, his focus on new technology was complemented by Peart's adaptation of Simmons electronic drums and percussion. Lifeson's contributions to the album were decidedly enhanced, in response to the minimalistic role, he played on "Signals". Still, many of his trademark guitar textures remained intact in the form of open reggae chords and funk and new-wave rhythms.
The transition from synthesizers to more guitar-oriented and organic instrumentation continued with Counterparts (1993) and its follow-up, Test for Echo (1996), again both produced in collaboration with Peter Collins. Up to this point, Counterparts and Test For Echo were two of Rush's most guitar-driven albums. The latter album also includes elements of jazz and swing-style drumming by Peart, which he had learned from Freddie Gruber during the interim between Counterparts and Test For Echo. In October 1996, in support of Test For Echo, the band embarked on a North American tour, the band's first without an opening act and dubbed "An Evening with Rush". The tour was broken up into two segments spanning October through December 1996 and May through July 1997.
After the conclusion of the Test for Echo tour in 1997, the band entered a five-year hiatus primarily due to personal tragedies in Peart's life. Peart's daughter Selena died in a car crash in August 1997, followed by the death of his wife Jacqueline from cancer in June 1998. Peart took a hiatus to mourn and reflect, during which he traveled extensively throughout North America on his BMW motorcycle, covering 88,000 km (55,000 mi). At some point in his journey, Peart decided to return to the band. Peart's book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road is a chronicle of his journey. In the book, he writes of how he had told his bandmates at Selena's funeral, "consider me retired." On November 10, 1998, a three-disc live album entitled Different Stages was released, dedicated to the memory of Selena and Jacqueline. Mixed by producer Paul Northfield and engineered by Terry Brown, it features recorded performances from the band's Counterparts, Test For Echo, and A Farewell to Kings tours, marking the band's fourth live album.
After a time of grief and recovery, and while visiting long-time Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan in Los Angeles, Peart was introduced to his future wife, photographer Carrie Nuttall. Peart and Nuttall married on September 9, 2000. In January 2001, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart came together to see if they could reassemble the band. According to Peart, "We laid out no parameters, no goals, no limitations, only that we would take a relaxed, civilized approach to the project." The band
produced seventy-four minutes of music for their new album, "Vapor Trails".
With the help of producer Paul Northfield, the band returned in May 2002 with Vapor Trails, written and recorded in Toronto. To herald the band's comeback, the single and lead track from the album, "One Little Victory", was designed to grab the attention of listeners with its rapid guitar and drum tempos. Vapor Trails marked the first Rush studio recording, to not include any keyboards or synthesizers since Caress of Steel. According to the band, the entire developmental process for Vapor Trails was extremely taxing and took approximately 14 months to finish, by far the longest the band had ever spent writing and recording a studio album. The album was supported by the band's first tour in six years, including first-ever concerts in Brazil and Mexico City, where they played to some of the largest crowds of their career. The largest was a capacity of 60,000 in São Paulo.
A live album and DVD, "Rush in Rio", was released in October 2003 featuring the last performance of the band's Vapor Trails Tour on November 23, 2002, at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To celebrate the band's 30th anniversary, June 2004 saw the release of Feedback, an extended play recorded in suburban Toronto featuring eight covers of such artists as Cream, The Who, and The Yardbirds, bands the members of Rush cite as inspiration around the time of their inception. To help support Feedback and continue celebrating their 30th anniversary as a band, Rush launched the 30th Anniversary Tour in the summer of 2004, playing dates in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. On September 24, 2004, the concert at The Festhalle in Frankfurt, Germany. Was filmed for a DVD titled R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour. Which was released on November 22, 2005. This release omitted eight songs also included on Rush in Rio; the complete concert was released on Blu-ray on December 8, 2009.
During promotional interviews for the R30 DVD, the band members revealed their intention to begin writing new material in early 2006. While in Toronto, Lifeson and Lee began the songwriting process in January 2006. During this time, Peart assumed his role of lyric writing while residing in Southern California. The following September, Rush chose to hire American producer Nick Raskulinecz to co-produce the album. The band officially entered Allaire Studios in Shokan, New York in November 2006 to record the bulk of the material. Taking the band five weeks, the sessions ended in December. On February 14, 2007, an announcement was made on the official Rush website that the title of the new album would be "Snakes & Arrows". The first single, entitled "Far Cry", was released to North American radio stations on March 12, 2007, and reached No. 2 on the Mediabase Mainstream and Radio and Records Charts.
The Rush website, newly redesigned on March 12, 2007, to support the new album, also announced the band would embark on a tour to begin in the summer. Snakes & Arrows released on May 1, 2007, in North America, where it debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with approximately 93,000 units sold in its first week. It sold an estimated 611,000 copies worldwide. To coincide with the beginning of Atlantic Ocean hurricane season, "Spindrift" was released as the official second radio single on June 1, 2007, while "The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum)" saw single status on June 25, 2007. "The Larger Bowl" peaked within the top 20 of both the Billboard Mainstream Rock and Media Base Mainstream charts, but "Spindrift" failed to appear on any commercial chart. The planned intercontinental tour in support of Snakes & Arrows began on June 13, 2007, in Atlanta, Georgia, coming to a close on October 29, 2007, at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland.
RUSH first appearance/interview on American tellivision in 33 years on the Colbert Report video from Via YouTube
The 2008 portion of the Snakes & Arrows tour began on April 11, 2008, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum, and concluded on July 24, 2008, in Noblesville, Indiana at the Verizon Wireless Music Center. On April 15, 2008, the band released Snakes & Arrows Live, a double live album documenting the first leg of the tour, recorded at the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam, Netherlands on October 16 and 17, 2007. A DVD and Blu-ray recording of the same concerts was released, on November 24, 2008. As Rush neared the conclusion of the Snakes & Arrows tour, they announced their first appearance on American television in over 30 years. They appeared on The Colbert Report on July 16, 2008. Where they were interviewed by Stephen Colbert and performed "Tom Sawyer". Continuing to ride what film critic Manohla Dargis called a "pop-cultural wave", the band appeared as themselves in the 2009 comedy film I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, along with other shows such as South Park and Family Guy.
Time Machine Tour, Clockwork Angels, R40 Tour, disbandment, and Peart's death
On February 16, 2009, Lifeson remarked the band may begin working on a new album in the Fall of 2009 with American producer Nick Raskulinecz once again producing. In November 2009, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart, were awarded the International Achievement Award at the annual SOCAN Awards in Toronto. On March 19, 2010, the CBC posted a video interview with Lee and Lifeson where they discussed Rush's induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010, at the Toronto Centre for the Arts' George Weston Recital Hall. The band was recognized for the songs "Limelight", "Closer to the Heart", "The Spirit of Radio", "Tom Sawyer" and "Subdivisions". In addition to discussing their induction, Lee and Lifeson touched on future material with Lee saying, "Just about a month and a half ago we had no songs. And now we've been writing and now we've got about 6 songs that we just love ..." On March 26, 2010, in an interview with The Globe and Mail, Lifeson remarked that there was even the potential for two supporting tours. Soon after, Peart confirmed Nick Raskulinecz had returned as co-producer.
Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee with SODCAN Award Via Google
The members of the brilliant music trio Rush gathered together for a lush meal at a Canadian hunting lodge in the 2010 video From Youtube. This dinner, was featured at the end of the award-winning 2010 documentary "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage celebrating the 40th anniversary of the band".
In April 2010, Rush entered Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Tennessee with Raskulinecz to record "Caravan" and "BU2B", two new songs to be featured on the band's studio album Clockwork Angels. "Caravan" and "BU2B" were released together on June 1, 2010, and made available for digital download. The Time Machine Tour's first leg began on June 29 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and finished on October 17 in Santiago, Chile, at the National Stadium. It featured the album Moving Pictures played in its entirety, as well as "Caravan" and "BU2B". It was suggested Rush would return to the studio after the completion of the Time Machine Tour with plans to release Clockwork Angels in 2011. However, Rush announced on November 19, 2010, that they would be extending the Time Machine Tour. The second leg began on March 30, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and came to an end on July 2, 2011, in George, Washington. On November 8, 2011, the band released Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland, a concert DVD, Blu-ray, and double CD documenting April 15, 2011, concert at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. After the tour's second leg was finished, Rush entered Revolution Recording studios in Toronto, Ontario, to finalize the recording of Clockwork Angels. The second single, "Headlong Flight", was released on April 19, 2012. Peart and author Kevin J. Anderson collaborated on a novelization of Clockwork Angels that was released in September 2012.
Clockwork Angels was released in the United States and Canada on June 12, 2012, and its supporting Clockwork Angels Tour began on September 7, 2012. As of August 31, 2011, Rush switched their American distribution from Atlantic Records over to the Warner Brothers majority-owned metal label, Roadrunner Records. Roadrunner handled American distribution of Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland and Clockwork Angels. Anthem/Universal Music would continue to release their music in Canada. On April 18, 2013, Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During Rush's European leg of the Clockwork Angels Tour, the June 8, 2013, show at the Sweden Rock Festival was the group's first festival appearance in 30 years. The band's performances on November 25, 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona, and November 28, 2012, in Dallas, Texas, were recorded to make a live CD/DVD/Blu-ray that was released on November 19, 2013.
On November 18, 2013, Lifeson said the band had committed to taking a year off, following the completion of the world tour in support of Clockwork Angels. "We've committed to taking about a year off", Lifeson said. "We all agreed when we finished this Clockwork Angels tour in early August we were going to take this time off and we weren't going to talk about band stuff or make any plans. We committed to a year. So that's going to take us through to the end of next summer, for sure. That's the minimum. We haven't stopped or quit. Right now we're just relaxing. We're taking it easy and just enjoying our current employment."
In September 2014, the Rush R40 box set was announced, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the release of the band's self-titled debut album. It included five previously released live video albums, as well as various previously unreleased footage from across the band's career. On January 22, 2015, the band officially announced the Rush R40 Tour, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Peart's membership in the band. The tour started on May 8 at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and wrapped up on August 1 at The Forum in Los Angeles.
On April 29, 2015, Lifeson stated in an interview that R40 might be the final large-scale Rush tour due to his psoriatic arthritis and Peart's chronic tendonitis. He noted that it didn't necessarily mean an end to the band, suggesting the possibility of smaller tours and limited performances. He also said he would like to work on soundtracks with Lee. On December 7, 2015, Peart stated in an interview he was retiring. The following day, Lee insisted that Peart's remarks had been taken out of context, and suggested he was "simply taking a break". Lifeson confirmed in 2016 that the R40 tour was the band's last large-scale tour. The band's latest documentary, Time Stand Still, was announced in November 2016.
On January 16, 2018, Lifeson told The Globe and Mail that it was unlikely that Rush would play any more shows or record new material. He said, "We have no plans to tour or record any more. We're done. After 41 years, we felt it was enough." In October 2018, Rolling Stone published an interview with Lee, who stated, "I'd say I can't tell you much other than that there are zero plans to tour again. As I said earlier, we're very close and talk all the time, but we don't talk about work. We're friends, and we talk about life as friends. I can't tell you more than that, I'm afraid. I would say there's no chance of seeing Rush on tour again as Alex, Geddy, Neil. But would you see one of us or two of us or three of us? That's possible."
On January 7, 2020, Neil Peart died at the age of 67 following a 3 1⁄2-year battle with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. (Born: September 12, 1952 - Died: January 7, 2020)
